The Hispanic community is the largest-rising minority group in the United States. According to the U.S. census, today there are 50.5 million Latinos in the U.S., and by 2050 there will be 130 million. The financial stability and contribution of Hispanics are important to the success of a U.S. economic recovery. Lack of financial knowledge can hinder an individual’s ability to own a home, secure college loans, manage debt and save for retirement.

This is a preview of Wells Fargo Hispanic Consumer Financial Education Campaign. Read the full post

Social listening is arguably the most significant technology to hit marketing since social media itself. As a public relations professional, access to the public sentiment has never been so easy or immediate.

This is a preview of Listen Up! The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter PR. Read the full post

About a month ago at 7:30 a.m., I was standing in line at Starbucks — you all know the drill — when the customer four spots ahead of me struck up a conversation with the counter staff about the difference between Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance certification. Faced with the prospect of eschewing my morning latte so I could make an 8 a.m. meeting, I did what any rational professional would have done and texted the office that we’d need to start the meeting 15 minutes late.

Now, this wasn’t because of my well-documented caffeine addiction. This was billable work. Playing out right in front of me was an unadulterated case study on how the products and services we all buy are becoming overshadowed by the stuff used to make them.

A good chunk of PR industry revenue falls into a category we call — in a somewhat antiquated manner — business-to-consumer, or B2C. The reality of the supply chain, from raw material to Jane Doe, is that B2C is actually made up of a series of business-to-business, or B2B, relationships. Even at the near-end of the chain, the brands many of us represent sell their wares not directly to consumers, but to big-box grocers and retailers that place a series of B2B requirements on suppliers.

And, like any meme with a kitten in it, those B2B requirements are creeping onto consumers’ radar.

This is a preview of Making B2B and B2C Work Together: The New Integrated PR. Read the full post

In today’s digital marketing landscape, breaking news occurs every minute — sometimes even in seconds — and we’re seeing more and more brands take advantage of this condensed news cycle to leverage real-time marketing, which is all about connecting what’s happening right now to your brand. Real-time marketing, or “news-jacking” as it’s sometimes called, is what good public relations always has done, but now we have the opportunity to leverage social networks and online conversations to make an impact in minutes.

This is a preview of Real-Time Marketing: How Brands Successfully News-Jack. Read the full post

Would it surprise you to learn that that public relations characters in film scored low on honesty yet high on being driven by profit?

My colleague, Candace White, Ph.D., and I weren’t surprised either when we conducted research investigating how movies with public relations characters measure up against real professionals.

While we’re all too familiar with the many stereotypes about practitioners, brought to life by characters like Samantha Jones, what really surprised us were the faulty assumptions we found about the industry as a whole.

In our study, we saw there were more male than female public relations characters. Female public relations characters were more likely to have social interactions than their male counterparts. Also, most of the characters were publicists or spokespersons.

These findings fly in the face of industry reality — nearly 70 percent of public relations practitioners are female; public relations is a profession and not a social service, and job opportunities extend far beyond publicists or spokespersons.

With these inaccurate portrayals, film-based stereotypes about public relations may limit student awareness of options in the industry, encourage social rather than professional skills, and facilitate unrealistic expectations about the gender makeup of public relations.

If you’re fed up with film stereotypes about public relations (and we know we are), here are four ways you can fight back:

This is a preview of Fed Up With Filmmakers Stereotypes of Public Relations?. Read the full post

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